Sporting opportunities for young and disabled people gets £1 million boost from London Sports

Young and disabled people across the capital wanting to get involved in sports have received a £1.04 million windfall from London Councils.
 
The London Youth Games and the London Sports Forum for Disabled People (LSF) have both received a £520,000 boost from the London Councils Grants Committee.
 
The London Youth Games has been running for more than 30 years and attracts more than 25,000 young people aged between six and 17 from across the capital. Around 30 different sporting competitions are held at the games and a range of new cultural events including dance and photography have also been introduced.
 
The funding from London Councils will be used to help expand the range of sports and events on offer to young people at the games over the next four years.
 
The LSF promotes the sporting interests of the capital's 1.4 million disabled people in the London area. It seeks to ensure that disabled people of all ages have the opportunity to get involved in all levels of sport and physical activity.
 
LSF will use the grant to fund a team of development officers to help disabled people get more involved in sport, and to work with a range of clubs and organisations to provide opportunities for disabled athletes.  

The London Councils Grants Committee chose to commission the London Youth Games after considering two funding applications from projects to support a pan-London programme of competitive sporting and physical activities for children and young people.
 
It also received eight applications for funding to support the provision of sporting opportunities for disabled people, with LSF being commissioned.

Chair of London Councils Grants Committee, Cllr Paul McCannah, said;

"The 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games will spark an increased interest in sport and our funding will help ensure everyone is given the opportunity to get involved. 

Encouraging our children to take up any kind of sporting and physical activity as early as possible is a huge step towards ensuring our future generations lead a healthy life. The London Youth Games also promote a wide range of cultural events which can also help broaden our children's horizons.

It is important that we make sport as inclusive for everyone as possible, and the funding we have provided LSF will help ensure that the needs of the capital's disabled people are not overlooked in the build up to 2012."  

Notes to editors

The £1.04 million funding is over four years.

London Councils distributes a pan-London grants budget of £28 million. This includes £1.6 million European Social Fund money.

London Councils is now using its pan-London grants budget to commission services from London's voluntary sector.

This change follows the findings of an independently chaired Grants Review Board. This was set up in 2004 to look at the distribution of the pan-London grants in individual boroughs, sub regions and across the whole of London. It also looked at areas of good practice from other funding bodies.

The new priority areas that will be used to commission services were developed following an extensive consultation with the voluntary sector, boroughs, the Mayor of London, and people with an interest in London's voluntary sector.

Groups are commissioned to provide services for up to four years.

Services will be commissioned in four tranches over the next year.

Any member of the media wanting more information should contact Stewart Henderson in the London Councils press office on 020 7934 9620 or on stewart.henderson@londoncouncils.gov.uk